One Thing’s Sure, San Diego Is a Winner in the Party Bowl

Chargers owner Alex Spanos and his wife, Faye, invited visiting NFL team owners to join them for a bite of dinner Thursday.

They didn’t serve wienies and beer.

At 320 guests, the Spanos’ Super Bowl celebration was among the smaller bashes given during Super Week, but its size only served to make it the most select. Spanos, who founded his empire on the catering business he started as a newlywed, truly put on the dog for his visiting gridiron cronies, whose ranks numbered NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and his wife, Carrie, and Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen and his wife, Annabel. (Bowlen’s opposite number on the field Sunday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, did not attend.)

The Spanoses gave their cozy little soiree in the Marina Ballroom of the new south tower of the San Diego Marriott, the NFL headquarters hotel and a site that by 6:30 p.m. Thursday seemed ready to pop its anodized steel rivets under the pressure of the crowd of registered guests and unregistered gawkers. The ballroom foyer, however, was an oasis of calm, even during a cocktail hour that prompted finger-pointing among normally well-mannered guests. (It was nearly impossible, for example, not to point when oddsmaker Jimmy (The Greek) Snyder strolled in with hotelier Barron Hilton, the man who first owned the Chargers franchise. Discreet fingers again wiggled at the entrance of comedian par excellence Bob Hope and his wife, Dolores.)

Somewhat out of keeping with the general tone of Super Week entertainments, the arrangements were elegant rather than flashy. A larger-than-usual horde of servers hovered much more quietly than usual with silver trays of champagne, glazed lobster medallions, smoked salmon puffs and tartlets filled with delicate bay shrimp; a mere glance from such folk as Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell or Dallas Cowboys President Tex Schramm was sufficient to attract the desired refreshment on the double. In a single, pointed bow to the raison d’etre behind the convocation, the obligatory ice carving dominated the foyer. This one, however, read “SUPER XXII BOWL,” and each letter stood some five feet tall; the central Roman numerals were sculpted from crimson ice. Spanos aide Kerie Lloyd explained such remarkable details by noting that the party had been one year in the planning.

San Diego Super Bowl Task Force Chairman Bob Payne was among the first to arrive on the scene. Looking highly satisfied in a slightly dazed way--rather like the cat who ate more canaries than he had anticipated--Payne said that he was about plumb partied out, but that, after all, Super Week called for a routine that rose significantly above the mundane.

“This has been a great week for the San Diego catering industry,” said Payne, grinning broadly. “I’ve never been to so many parties in my life. I don’t know if I’d want to go through this every week, but it’s sure been fun.”

Alex Spanos certainly seemed to find the evening fun. “As a team owner, I think this is just the way to show the NFL that San Diego knows how to do it up right,” he said. “Tonight is meant to show the NFL that we know how to give them a party better than anywhere else, and that San Diego is the place to be.” Later, he told the crowd that he found it “tough to be on the outside looking in,” but that he offered his most sincere congratulations to the Broncos and Redskins.

For their parts, the NFL big shots--Rozelle, Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Brennan, Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney--seemed to be eating up the scene with oversized, sterling silver spoons. Spanos had arranged for Les Brown and His Band of Renown to be on stage, playing, the moment that the ballroom doors opened, and the dance floor filled repeatedly during breaks in the meal of smoked salmon, veal chops and baked Alaska fashioned in the shape of footballs.

The merriest moments came when Hope, a longtime Spanos buddy, took the podium. “This may be a party for you,” he told the crowd, “but it’s a wake for Alex Spanos. For a while, he was thinking of turning the team over to Jerry Falwell.”

The comedian, never shy in his topical humor, managed to tie the game to one of the week’s hotter news events, the televised exchange between Vice President George Bush and CBS News anchorman Dan Rather.

“The Super Bowl will be a hard-fought contest,” said Hope. “It will kind of remind you of one of Dan Rather’s interviews. I think he got Bush-whacked. It was kind of biblical--I think he interviewed a burning Bush.”

The audience laughed and prepared to dance, but there was more--Hope dragged Spanos on stage to join him in a soft-shoe routine to the melody of “Tea for Two.” Spanos, who does sometimes perform, had said earlier that he wished to be spared the experience that night. However, the team owner did acquit himself well in his unique version of the Super Bowl shuffle.

Plenty of social San Diego was invited to the gala. Among the local guests were Ernest and Jean Hahn, Leon and Barbara Parma, Bill and Kay Rippee, Tom and Tracy Stickel, Rick and Susan Smith, Barbara Woodbury with Bill Black, Larry and Jeanne Lawrence, Police Chief Bill Kolender and his wife, Lois, Si and Karen Coleman, Miles and Nancy Harvey, and Harry and Susan Summers.

The party scene probably reached its apogee Friday; had they been able to clone themselves, those who numbered among the much-invited still would not have been able to get to everything. Attending everything , for once, was simply beyond the scope of mere mortals. The tone was different, too--usually, entertainments are given as fund-raisers for one worthy organization or another. This day, however, corporations gave them out of civic pride and plain high spirits, and they were moments of unexampled lavishness.

Great American First Savings Bank, which was host of the official Super Bowl Kick-Off party that blasted the skies above San Diego Bay with tons of pyrotechnics and made the downtown streets seem busier than New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve, invited a strictly local crowd of VIPs to watch the show from aboard the Zumbrota, a yacht that once belonged to actress Mae West.

Galley chefs served up freshly roasted beef tenderloin and miniature quiche Lorraine pastries on the main deck, but few passengers could resist heading topside for the fresh air--bracing or freezing, depending if one had remembered to bring an overcoat--and the sight of a shoreline jammed with partying San Diegans.

Great American Chairman Gordon Luce, who with his wife, Karon, served as party captain, seemed utterly delighted by the huge turnout.

“Tonight’s celebration is a tribute to the people of San Diego,” said Luce. “This is our gift to the city.”

Kayaks raced between the Zumbrota and the shore as the yacht headed for the open bay, and these fragile craft seemed much less likely to sink than Seaport Village, which looked nearly submerged under the weight of onlookers. Seaport Village owner Morris Taubman waved back at the cheering throng, which was brightly backlighted by the new towers of downtown San Diego, and said, “This city is changing. Just wait until the Super Bowl returns here.”

The bay was a virtual parking lot for boats of all sizes; each carried a bright light at the tip of its mast. San Diego Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Max Schetter found poetry in the scene.

“The lights are like stars in the sky,” said Schetter. “It’s as if there were a new constellation over San Diego.”

There was, in fact, a new constellation over the city just moments later, when emerald rapiers of laser light perforated the skies and etched a giant football on the undersides of the clouds. The fireworks display that followed was like none seen here before; suffice it to say that the crowd ceased cheering and the zumbrota passengers grew still--the scene was too engrossing for any sounds but the sky-shaking explosions.

Among the guests were Cheryl and Bob Cerasoli, Jim and Jerrie Schmidt, Roger Lindland, Kelly Luce, Judy Vance, Tina and Fred Norfleet, Kathy and Ed Quinn, Don McVay, Barbara Bry and Pat Kruer, Sen. Pete Wilson aide Bob White, Bill and Donna Lynch, and Judy and Tom Carter.

Several disembarked when the boat called at Coronado--these headed for the immense gala given by NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle at the North Island Coast Guard hangar. Others returned to San Diego and raced back to their cars in order to get to the lavish party given at its Sports Arena branch by Home Federal.

Home Federal, title sponsor of the “Home Federal Super Nights” pair of Frank Sinatra-Liza Minnelli concerts given Friday and Saturday at the Sports Arena, pulled out the stops when it came to entertaining the 150 guests it invited for the Friday concert.

Underneath an Art Deco tent pitched next to its building, Home Federal treated its guests to champagne--a Super Week prerequisite--as well as mounds of oysters, golden caviar, Alaskan crab legs, giant shrimp and other shellfish. Sharing host duties were Marilyn Fletcher, wife of Home Federal chairman Kim Fletcher (Kim was sailing that day in the star boat regatta off the coast of Argentina), and savings and loan President Bob Adelizzi and his wife, Tommi.

The group--which included Tawfiq and Richel Khoury, Bill and Lollie Nelson, and Tijuana socialites Sirak and Afife Baloyan--bused over to the Sports Arena in time to claim ringside seats. Marilyn Fletcher said that she found the rush exhilarating, if a little novel; she said, “I’ve met myself coming and going this week. There have been a lot of costume changes.”

Her costume that night included a pair of crimson-sequined slippers much like the ruby slippers that Liza Minnelli’s mother, Judy Garland, wore in “The Wizard of Oz.” The tribute was intentional; Fletcher said that a youthful Minnelli participated in a program that Fletcher taught when she was finishing her studies at UCLA.

After listening to the grand finale of “New York, New York” sung together by Minnelli and Sinatra, the crowd returned to their cars to find that Home Federal had included good-night messages that wished them a pleasant drive home and a “Super Weekend.”